Scripps jobs growing, but short of goal as deadline nears

Scripps Florida has grown to 511 employees, but the biotech company still has some hiring to do to meet its job creation deadline in December, Palm Beach County commissioners learned Tuesday.

The county and state invested more than $600 million in taxpayer-backed incentives to lure The Scripps Research Institute to Palm Beach County.

One of the requirements for the public investment was for Scripps to hire at least 545 employees at its Jupiter campus by the end of 2013.

The long-term intention was to turn Palm Beach County into a biotech industry hub, with Scripps generating spinoff businesses and thousands of new jobs.

That economic payoff has been slower in materializing than once expected. But Scripps does anticipate hiring another 34 employees in time to meet its 2013 job-creation requirement, county officials said Tuesday during an annual update to the commission on Scripps’ progress.

While critics say Scripps’ job creation hasn’t lived up to the cost of its public investment, Scripps backers contend that the economic development benefit was always expected to take 20 to 30 years to materialize.

“It’s working. We are starting to see the return on investments that the taxpayers made,” said Daniel Martell, CEO of the Economic Council of Palm Beach County.

California-based Scripps in 2003 picked Palm Beach County for its East Coast expansion.

Environmental objections in 2006 torpedoed the county’s initial plan to build a Scripps-anchored “biotech village” on Mecca Farms, west of Palm Beach Gardens.

After sinking more than $100 million into failed efforts to build Scripps on Mecca Farms, the county moved Scripps to Florida Atlantic University campus in Jupiter, where its new headquarters and campus opened in 2009.

Now plans are in the works for a biotech expansion across the street in nearby Palm Beach Gardens, with Scripps proposing to partner with Tenet Healthcare to open a teaching hospital.

As local leaders push for that expansion, one of the incentives in Scripps' deal with the county is raising eyebrows.

The county paid $16 million to acquire 70 acres for a Scripps expansion. Scripps gets to lease the land for $1 and eventually take ownership, but it can also sublease the property to development partners for a potential multi-million-dollar payday.

That’s money that Palm Beach County should have been able to get a portion of instead of “giving money away,” according to County Commissioner Priscilla Taylor.

“We own it, but Scripps is going to lease it,” said Taylor, who like her fellow commissioners wasn’t on the commission when the Scripps deal was approved. “Our taxpayers are paying for this land.”

Scripps’ $1 rent and ability to make money by subleasing the land was part of the recruitment sales pitch when Palm Beach County was vying with other destinations to be a home for the biotech company, according to County Administrator Robert Weisman. It was “an incentive to make this happen,” he said.

Some south Palm Beach County leaders still contend that Scripps would be doing better had it ended up in Boca Raton, one of its suitors when the Mecca Farms site tanked.

“Scripps has been making good progress. I think they would be making better progress if they were elsewhere in Palm Beach County,” said Palm Beach County Mayor Steven Abrams, who in 2006 as Boca Raton’s mayor tried to convince Scripps to move to his city.